News of the Day From Across the Globe, July 23

Chronicle News Services

Published 8:53 pm, Monday, July 22, 2013

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News of the Day From Across the Globe, July 23

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1 Peace referendum: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that he is fast-tracking legislation that would allow him to put any peace deal with the Palestinians to a national referendum. Netanyahu spoke three days after Secretary of State John Kerry invited Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to Washington for preliminary talks, though wide gaps remain on the framework of the actual negotiations.

2 Military mishap: The emergency release of four bombs into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park by the U.S. Navy has angered some Australians, despite assurances Monday that the unexploded ordnance posed no threat to the World Heritage-listed site's delicate ecosystem. Two jets were meant to drop the unarmed bombs on an island near the reef as part of a live fire exercise last week but were forced to release them at sea to avoid damaging several unauthorized vessels that had entered the area, according to the Navy. The incident occurred July 16 off the coast of Queensland state, as part of a biennial joint training exercise involving about 28,000 Australian and U.S. military personnel.

3 Genital cutting: A comprehensive new assessment by UNICEF of the ancient practice of female genital cutting has found that it is gradually declining in many countries, even where it remains deeply entrenched. The report, released Monday, describes the practice as "remarkably tenacious, despite attempts spanning nearly a century to eliminate it." But they also say teenage girls are now less likely to have been cut than older women in more than half of the 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East where it is concentrated.

4 Radioactive water: A Japanese utility said Monday its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is probably leaking contaminated water into sea, acknowledging for the first time a problem long suspected by experts. Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, also came under fire Monday for not disclosing earlier that the number of plant workers with thyroid radiation exposures exceeding threshold cancer risk levels was 10 times what it said earlier.

5 Mayor killed: Prosecutors in the small southern Mexican town of Aquila arrested the police chief Monday for allegedly shooting the mayor to death after an argument. Prosecutors in Oaxaca state haven't revealed what the two argued about. They identified the police chief as Adan Gonzalez and the dead mayor as Geronimo Manuel Garcia Rosas. More than two dozen mayors have been killed in Mexico since 2006. Drug gangs are suspected in some of those killings, but a dispute between a mayor and his local police force was the motive in at least one other of the killings.

6 Dubai rape case: A Norwegian interior designer who said she was raped by a Sudanese colleague during a business trip to the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai earlier this year has been "pardoned" from her conviction and 16-month sentence for extramarital sex, drinking alcohol and providing false information to authorities. The decision Monday cleared the way for 24-year-old Marte Deborah Dalelv to return to Norway. But it in no way reflected a change in the Islamic federation's laws or practices that typically treat women against whom sexual violence is committed as criminals rather than victims. The 33-year-old Sudanese man, who was also convicted of extramarital sex and drinking, was also pardoned.